


Arms and the Boy

by Thursday_Next



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 00:49:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/616224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thursday_Next/pseuds/Thursday_Next
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1939. Sybil Branson visits her seventeen-year-old cousin Matthew and is shocked to find him in uniform.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arms and the Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for series 3 and the 2012 Christmas special. Speculative fic about young Sybil and Mary's son.
> 
> As this fic is set seventeen years after the Christmas special, it does have brief mention of the death of canon characters.
> 
> The title is from the poem of the same name by Wilfred Owen.

_War has a way of distinguishing between the things that matter and the things that don't._ \-- Matthew Crawley, Series 2, Episode 1

 

Sybil whistled as she stood on the doorstep of the Crawleys' townhouse, waiting for an answer to her ring. Whistling, her dear departed grandmother had always told her, was not a ladylike activity, but who really gave a fig about that these days, even in Belgravia?

The door was answered at last by the grave, grey-haired butler, Barrow. 

"Good afternoon, Miss Branson," he said, with a slight incline of his head and a smile that she knew was rarely bestowed on other visitors. Barrow had a soft spot for her, Sybil knew – he had told her as much, once, when she'd been nine years old and hurt her knee climbing when she oughtn't to have been. A soft spot at first for her mother's sake -- he'd said as he'd bandaged the scrape and fed her a contraband cookie -- and then for her own. She'd had a soft spot for him, too, ever since.

"Hello, Barrow," Sybil said as she stepped inside. "I think I'm expected." She fluttered the piece of paper containing her cousin's hastily scrawled note. Barrow's smile dropped, his face turning a little pale. She'd seen the man disapprove of people before on many an occasion – nobody could manage a look of disdain quite like a butler, she'd always thought – but she'd never thought to see such an expression turned on herself. It couldn't be that she was visiting Matthew unchaperoned – they'd practically grown up together, after all, and there was certainly nothing of _that_ nature between them, nor would there ever be. And she didn't think Barrow the sort of servant – the sort of man -- to be making any kind of judgment on a tryst, even if there had been. 

"They're all quite well, I hope?" she asked, worried suddenly by his uncharacteristic hesitance. She shrugged off her coat and handed it to him.

"You'll find Lord Grantham in the library, miss," he said at last, as though that were an answer. It was sixteen months or more since their grandfather had passed away, but it still sounded odd to hear her little cousin Matthew called by such a grand title. 

"Thank you, Barrow," Sybil said, as she took herself down the corridor and opened the library door without waiting to be announced. 

What she saw when she opened the door made her freeze quite still with shock. There stood Matthew, broad smile too big for his thin face, ears sticking out from beneath a thatch of straw-coloured hair, dressed in the sickly green of an army uniform. He looked younger even than his seventeen years and she couldn't imagine what the war office could have been thinking, letting him join up.

"Well," he said, his proud grin fading as she stood silent and immobile in the doorway. "Aren't you going to say something?"

"Oh Matty!" Sybil exclaimed, breath leaving her all in a rush. "Whatever have you done?"

"I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm, I confess," he said with a frown. "From you at least."

"What do you expect me to say?" Sybil demanded a little tartly, "Congratulations? Hope you enjoy getting yourself shot at by Germans?"

"Sybil—"

"No," she went on, not letting him speak, "You won't have to worry about Germans. Aunt Mary will kill you before you get within a hundred miles of the front line and you know it."

"I do know it," he said, not the slightest bit contrite. "That's why I wrote you first."

"I can't imagine why." Sybil folded her arms and glared at her cousin with all the authority that being a mere twenty months older could give her. "You know very well my feelings on fighting of all kinds."

"My father fought in the great war," Matthew reminded her. "I could hardly call myself his son if I didn't do the same. And I could hardly call myself Earl of Grantham if I hid behind my mother's skirts and didn't lift a finger to fight for my country."

"It's Poland that's been invaded, not Downton." Sybil snapped. Silence hung between them and she wished she could take the words back. Perhaps the war was necessary. But was it so very selfish to wish that nobody's brothers and sons had to be killed doing what was necessary? A pleading note creeping into her voice as she spoke again. "Matthew, you're seventeen. Couldn't you have waited?"

"What, until I was married with an heir safely delivered?" Matthew said bitterly. "Would that have been better?"

"No of course not. That's not fair, Matty. You know that wasn't what I meant."

"I know."

He ought to have known. They'd made a pact, when they were younger, never to wound each other by bringing up each other's lost parents in an argument. Matthew had once hit two of the village boys until their noses bled when they'd made unkind comments about her motherless state after she'd wanted to play at climbing trees with them. She felt a sad sort of twist in her chest at the memory. Of course Matthew always had stood up for anyone who was bullied, no wonder the situation in Europe had provoked him into immediate action.

"It's just – this will break your mother's heart, you know that don't you?"

His shoulders slumped, but there was a fire in his eyes. He had a stubborn streak inherited directly from his mother and an unshakable determination to do what he believed to be right, just as everybody said his father had possessed. 

"I know," Matthew said softly. "And that's why – " He stepped forward, catching hold of one of her hands in his own and looking her seriously in the eye. "Sybil, you will look after her for me, won't you?"

Lady Mary was not the sort of woman who would ever admit to needing anyone to look after her, Sybil knew. 

"Of course," Sybil agreed with a sigh. 

There was really no other answer she could give.


End file.
